While Attorney General Eric Holder should be applauded for his recent comments calling for a reduction in mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, his speech in San Francisco last week to the American Bar Association didn’t go far enough in urging an end to the war on drugs that has so decimated American cities since it began under President Richard Nixon in 1971.

With the announcement of his new Justice Department policy, Holder has directed the 94 U.S. attorneys to no longer list drug quantities in indictments for low-level drug offenders, thus not triggering the prospect of an automatic mandatory minimum sentence. If those arrested meet strict criteria – no violence, no weapons, no sale to children and no significant criminal history – they could be eligible for lighter sentences or non-prison alternative sentencing.

For example, under the current mandatory minimum sentencing regimen, a drug courier caught with five kilograms of cocaine would get an automatic 10-year sentence. With the quantity of drugs left out of the criminal complaint, the judge would have the discretion to sentence the defendant from zero to 20 years, based on the specific details of the case.

The reasons for Attorney General Holder’s action are simple and obvious. The drug war, and its associated harsh sentencing over the years, has created such harmful financial and societal costs that it can no longer be sustained. Since 1980, the federal prison population has grown 800 percent to 219,000, with drug offenders accounting for almost half the population. The country spent $80 billion in 2010 on incarceration costs, and our prisons are presently operating at nearly 40 percent over capacity. With only 5 percent of the population, our state and federal prisons hold 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated.

Holder couldn’t have been more accurate when he said in his speech, “too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for no truly good law enforcement reason.” Speaking specifically about how the drug war has negatively impacted communities of color, he said, “A vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities,” adding that, “many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate these problems rather than alleviate them.” Truer words have never been spoken.

Our nation’s cities and their black and brown residents have been hit especially hard by the drug war, and how it has been fought. The evidence and statistics make clear that the harshest penalties for drug offenses have been disproportionately applied to black men, who have received sentences nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes.

It is not just the harsh and disproportionate sentences that have so harmed our communities, but also what happens to the drug offenders when they’re released from prison. Because of draconian laws and the stigma attached to being a convicted felon, it is almost impossible for those who have served their time to find work or housing upon their release.

While the actions of Attorney General Holder in attempting to limit the worst abuses of mandatory minimum sentencing are a helpful first step, much more must be done by him, President Obama, and Congress to change how we address the issue of substance abuse in this country from the criminal justice model to a public health approach.

Perhaps the most important next thing the Feds could do to reduce the harm of the drug war is call a truce on marijuana. With the legalization of pot in Colorado and Washington, the states are already taking the lead on this important issue. As with the racial disparity evidenced in mandatory minimum sentencing, African-Americans are almost four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as white people, even though blacks and whites use the drug at similar rates. The time to stop arresting people for selling and consuming a plant less dangerous and toxic than alcohol is now.